Zoom Lenses

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marcos

marcos

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After the digital SLR camera thread I went out and bought a Canon EOS 400D as did Tan.
I'm very pleased with the camera so far but I need to get a decent telephoto/zoom lens and wondered if anyone has any preferences/advice.
I obviously don't want to spend silly money so the 5 grand ones are off the menu but wondered how much I should look at spending and what sort of range I need, obviously the more zoom the better but I presume there is some sort of compromise I will have to make.
Thanks in advance guys

Marcos
 
My experience is that quality equals weight. The advert states it is light weight? I have know personal experience, but I own the equivalent Nikon item and can thoroughly recommend it. lens.

If weight is an issue and the budget rules out my first choice then perhaps this one might be a better choice?

I am a great believer in you get what you pay for however there might be some very nice third party lens out there that are equally as good.

The 70 - 200 gives a great flexibility as in the real world it actually equates to approximately 105 - 300? Having stabilisation is another huge bonus if you are going to hand hold the equipment. You 'should' be able to use the lens at very low speeds.

Good luck,
John
 
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While one can buy older lenses at lower prices, bear in mind that some of the modern lenses give truly excellent performance compared to older lenses which could be heavier and bulkier.
However I have rarely been disappointed with any top branded lens. Tamron and Sigma also provide excellent price performance but it is important to make sure that they match exactly the ability of your camera.
 
whats the zoom lens for ??????;)
 
marcos said:
Wildlife obviously:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
Wildlife covers a whole spectrum of choices. I would suggest my recommendation is perhaps a minimum? Here is another one that you might want to consider

Again it has image stabilisation.

John
 
glojo said:
Wildlife covers a whole spectrum of choices. I would suggest my recommendation is perhaps a minimum? Here is another one that you might want to consider

Again it has image stabilisation.

John
Click to expand...

Kin ell John, I’ve bought cars for less than that!!
 
glojo said:
Wildlife covers a whole spectrum of choices. I would suggest my recommendation is perhaps a minimum? Here is another one that you might want to consider

Again it has image stabilisation.

John
Click to expand...

john you keep mentioning a image stabilisation ;) for MARCOS... one hand on the SLR the other hand on the hardback ..................book of twiching;) me thinks:rolleyes:
 
Very good.:D
 
whizzkid11 said:
I highly recommend the USM lense for the CANONs - Here are some links to what I 'had' and sold - so it will give you an idea of what to look for and what sort of price range they sell for ...

**** LINK 1 ****
Click to expand...

This isn't the best of Zoom Lenses available for the Canon range.

Have a good read through the reviews of zooms on http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/index.php?cat=45

THe reviews are done by users and not one individual. People give ratings that are then averaged to produce a final result. You also get to see if there are bad copies of the lens in circulation, it does happen. Look at the L series of Lenses from Canon if you want good quality.

For my 30D i have the following lenses.

EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM- the kit lens - to be honest hardly ever use it and am thinking about getting rid.

EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 USM - great wide angle. I know a lot has been said about buying the EF-S series of lens as they don't work on the more advanced cameras like the 5D and upwards but this is a great lens. £525

EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM stunning lens - but now you are looking at around £1,100, i paid a year ago around £1,400

EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM again around the £1,400 mark - but so sharp.

EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM my current favourite - again tack sharp. Great for portraits and close up work. £260
 
The range you need depends on what you want to photograph with your telephoto. If you're photographing wildlife - particularly birds - you need all the reach you can get and 400mm is the minimum. Bear in mind that you'll mostly be using at 400mm and even 400mm won't be enough unless you can get really close. That's why a lot of people go for primes because there's less of a compromise on quality. There area couple of downsides on long primes - it's sometimes difficult to pick up the subject in your viewfinder (with a zoom you can start at a short focal length), and they don't "pack down" like some zooms do. They're always a fixed length.

As has been suggested the 100-400 L is a good lens and you need IS at this range. Another alternative is a 300 f4 IS and a 1.4X TC. Then again the 70-200 range might be more what you want. I'd avoid the big apertures (f2.8) unless you want to use a TC - they're just too heavy and don't give much advantage over an f4 considering how much more they cost. I'd try and stick to Canon gear if I were you. It's more expensive than the likes of Sigma but it's future-proof. These reverse-engineered lenses may not work on new Canon cameras. They probably will, but you never know. Also you can always sell Canon stuff for a good price.
 
To highlight the point about the 200mm zoom lens. This is a hand held picture taken at a relatively low speed. Yes it does have stabilisation :eek: and yes it is the F2.8 :eek:
Finch.jpg


The photo has NOT been touched by any post picture software, and I doubt if you can get much nearer to the subject unless you start using a hide etc.
 
Flasheart said:
This isn't the best of Zoom Lenses available for the Canon range.

Have a good read through the reviews of zooms on http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/index.php?cat=45

THe reviews are done by users and not one individual. People give ratings that are then averaged to produce a final result. You also get to see if there are bad copies of the lens in circulation, it does happen. Look at the L series of Lenses from Canon if you want good quality.

For my 30D i have the following lenses.

EF-S 17-85mm f4-5.6 IS USM- the kit lens - to be honest hardly ever use it and am thinking about getting rid.

EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 USM - great wide angle. I know a lot has been said about buying the EF-S series of lens as they don't work on the more advanced cameras like the 5D and upwards but this is a great lens. £525

EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM stunning lens - but now you are looking at around £1,100, i paid a year ago around £1,400

EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM again around the £1,400 mark - but so sharp.

EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM my current favourite - again tack sharp. Great for portraits and close up work. £260
Click to expand...


I fully agree, this is the entry level budget range - which is ideal for someone who has just bought a new camera and is getting used to it.... and as suggested, he doesn't want to take out a mortgage.

Personal choice would be L Series USM lense, which I would have got, but I went the NIKON route myself.
 
If I might go OT for a moment I have been thinking of one of the long focal length, rletaively small aperture lenses that appear cheaply on ebay e.g.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NIKON-FIT-TEL...5QQihZ012QQcategoryZ30070QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
This would be for occasional long shots of aircraft and birds.
Does anybody have any experience of these and if so could they comment on quality? I am well aware that there would be complications in use and that does not bother me.
 
Manual focus super-telephoto lenses are almost completely useless IMO except for shooting stationary objects (stationary for quite a long time too because focusing is difficult and because of the very shallow depth of field it has to be really accurate). If you're still keen on a cheap 500mm I'd go for a mirror. There are some reasonably good ones around. I used to have a Tamron 500SP mirror which was excellent quality but I hardly ever got a decent shot with it because of the difficulty of focusing. I ebayed it and got a Minolta 500mm autofocus which is superb - unfortunately the Minolta/Sony is the only AF mirror on the market. Mirrors have several advantages in this area - very small, very light, discrete (they don't intimidate people because they don't know the power of the lens) and, crucially, they have no chromatic aberration, which is the bugbear with cheap glass lenses. All colours of light are reflected at the same angle.

This is an example of a Robin from about 20 feet:

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=223889367&size=m
 
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I've just bought a Canon 70-300mm F/4-5.6 IS USM lens for £360 to go with my canon 400d I just bought. Its not the cheapest lens you can get nor is it by any means the most expensive. It suits my needs fine though and the IS is a godsend. Because of the 1.6x crop factor of the 400d the lens really equates to a 112mm - 480mm on a 35mm equiv scale.
 
I use the Canon 70-200 F4 L on my 20D, excellent lens and relatively inexpensive for an "L series".
 
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